Tolerance--he said it better than me.

[catsittingstill]

There is a great essay about freedom and tolerance here.  I wish I had written it.  But I enjoyed reading it, so I forgive the author for making me jealous.

And a stray thought.  19 terrorists who were also Muslims (out of a group of about 10,000 al Quaeda members) destroyed the World Trade Center nine years and a smidge ago.  There's a diagram here.  There are 1.5 billion Muslims in the world.  1,500,000,000 minus 10,000 is 1,499,990,000.  If rounding to three significant figures is a reasonable first approximation, then to a reasonable first approximation, NONE of them were involved.   The terrorists disappear in the rounding error.  They stay in the rounding error until you get to the seventh significant figure.  It's weird to think like this--but it also makes me wonder why I haven't thought this way all along.

The diagram also makes clear why we would rather not be at war with Islam if we can avoid it.  Not to mention that a sizable chunk of us* are Muslim, which would make it all even harsher.

*Where I'm using "we" and "us" to mean Americans, and beg the indulgence of anyone I discomfit thereby.

Comments

[tigertoy.livejournal.com]

Does teaching a child that he'll burn forever for being bad constitute a threat of violence? Does preventing a child from learning about safe sex constitute deprivation? Does raising a child to be ignorant of any other way of living constitute keeping them in the group against their will?

I've been struggling with such issues for years. Don't patronize me by telling me they're trivial.

[randwolf.livejournal.com]

[Added: it was not my intention to patronize you.]

I know no way to outlaw these things without making matters worse. Are we to make a list of disapproved beliefs, which, if taught, allow the state to take children from a family? Where could we find the saints who could write and enforce such law?

At least these days outs are available to most children.

[catsittingstill.livejournal.com]

Actually, I wonder if putting and end to home schooling would help with this. Children raised in such conditions would at least discover at an early age that other people thought differently if they mixed with children from other subcultures in school.